Developers are seemingly working on running games made for the PS3 natively on PS5 hardware through emulation. Developer Implicit Conversions has, on its public roadmap, added a new item: PlayStation 3 Emulator. The posting on the roadmap says that the studio is researching and prototyping a PS3 emulator that would work with in-house Syrup emulation engine.
It is worth noting, however, that PS3 emulation with Syrup could still be quite some time away, since the post on the roadmap has been tagged as “Dreaming About”, which would indicate that the developers are still in the research phase.
For context, the Syrup engine allows developers to bring their older titles from consoles going as far back as the Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System to more modern platforms like Xbox Series X/S and PS5. The emulator provides a host of features as well, including support for online play, save states, timeline rewinding, and widescreen support.
The studio works with Sony to bring some of its classic titles from PS One and PS2 on to modern platforms, making them available through the higher tiers of a PlayStation Plus subscription. PS3 games, however, can currently only be played on the PS5 through the use of cloud gaming.
It is also worth noting that PS3 emulation has also been under works by open source developers, with emulators like RPCS3 already working with some PS3 games on PC. Progress, however, is still an ongoing thing, with developers working on adding more features and support for more games.